Erin Burnett a lesbian? Shakira in the Hells Angels? No, just lying clickbait

Lately while perusing Yahoo Finance I’ve seen quite a few sponsored articles that allege CNN anchor Erin Burnett is a lesbian in a same-sex marriage, when she’s clearly not.
It could be wishful thinking by some lesbians or fake news by someone who doesn’t like her politics. But more likely it’s just an attempt to draw clicks to questionable online articles. These articles have headlines like “Meet Erin Burnett’s Wife” and “Erin Burnett’s Wife Is the Most Gorgeous Woman Ever.”
Huh? Burnett married executive David Rubulotta in December 2012. They have three children.
Last year, I noted how clickbait purveyors implied that actor Tom Selleck is gay. Selleck has been married to actress Jillie Mack since 1987.
Another sponsored post on Yahoo Finance headlined “20 Odd Hells Angels Rules” used a photo of an attractive blond on the back of a motorcycle. The photo is of singer Shakira. It was taken while she filmed a music video in Barcelona in August 2010. The Colombian pop star is not a member of the outlaw motorcycle gang. Also, the driver of the motorcycle in the photo is black and the U.S. Hells Angels organization has no black members.
Yahoo Finance needs to do a better job of policing clickbait purveyors on its service.

The ephemeral internet: Disappearing journalism, personal photos and President Trump’s tweets

Discussing the temporary nature of the internet, one journalist described the platform as “more like an Etch-a-Sketch than a stone engraving.”
I know from personal experience in my journalism career how online articles can disappear into the void. But the same goes for other online media. That includes people’s personal photos, music lists and blog posts.
I haven’t checked Tech-media-tainment lately for dead weblinks, but I’m sure there are a lot of articles I’ve cited that are no longer available.
Twitter created the “ultimate case of link rot” when it banned President Donald Trump from its platform in January. Regardless of how you feel about Trump, that’s erasing history.
What follows are some good articles about the ephemeral nature of the internet. Most are downbeat, but the Internet Archive provides some sunshine.

The Internet Is Rotting (The Atlantic; June 30, 2021)

The Old Internet Died And We Watched And Did Nothing (BuzzFeed; Dec. 28, 2019)

Preserving work in a time of vanishing archives (Columbia Journalism Review; Nov. 5, 2019)

Trump’s ban from Twitter creates the ultimate case of link rot in posts across the internet (The Verge; Jan. 9, 2021)

A Conversation About Video Game Preservation In The Gaming Industry Is Long, Long Overdue (Techdirt; June 2, 2021)

Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria (The Atlantic; April 20, 2017)

Thanks to the Internet Archive, the history of American newspapers is more searchable than ever (NiemanLab; Feb. 2, 2021)

Photo: “Internet” by HD of St. Gallen, Switzerland via Creative Commons.

More ways videos disappear online: Content moderation, business deals

For over a decade I’ve chronicled the many ways that the internet has failed to live up to its early promise of comprehensive libraries of digital content accessible to anyone.
Most recently I wrote about how videos often disappear after just short periods online. Videos get removed because of changes in licensing, copyright disputes and websites going belly up. But there are many other reasons.
YouTube recently took down a journalism video by libertarian news website Reason claiming it promoted “medical misinformation.” Reason said its coverage of biohackers trying to produce do-it-yourself vaccines was solid reporting on an important subject. (See article “Why Did YouTube Remove This Reason Video?”)
Techdirt wrote about a case of YouTube relocating music videos by an artist it accused artificially inflating views by hiring a marketing service. The artist, Darnaa, said YouTube’s decision to change the URLs for her videos made her music more difficult to promote and find. (See article “Content Moderation Case Study: YouTube Relocates Video Accused Of Inflated Views.”
Then, there’s the constant shuffling of licensed content between streaming video services. Reelgood recently showed how hit movies “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” traveled among four subscription video services within a year. Reelgood is one of the best services for keeping track of which content is located where online. (See articles “The Real Batman Villain: Hollywood’s Streaming-Service Deals” and “How a tiny startup fixed the future of TV.”)
But what happens to original shows created for specific services that no longer exist? Decider tackled that thorny issue with an article titled “When the Streaming Platform Dies, What Happens to Its Shows?” Some shows find new streaming homes while others get locked away in studio vaults.

Photo: Reelgood graphic.

The reopening of the economy can’t come soon enough for E3

The E3 video game conference, also known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo, returned from a one-year absence this week with a virtual conference. Organizers canceled last year’s in-person E3 in Los Angeles because of the Covid-19 pandemic and took this year’s show online because of the continuing health crisis.
Judging from reactions to this year’s digital E3, the conference sorely needs a physical show to build excitement for the video game industry. Attendees said this year’s show was a boring, nonevent.
This year’s E3 was missing some major companies, including Activision Blizzard. Electronic Arts and Sony. And Take-Two Interactive Software only hosted a panel discussion on diversity and inclusion, instead of discussing new games. Other companies holding events during the show didn’t make any major announcements.
“The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has become less relevant in recent years, and the irrelevancy has accelerated with the pandemic,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson said in a June 15 report.
Johnson said E3 2021 didn’t reflect the vibrancy of the industry today.
“While there were fewer new game introductions owing to lower E3 participation rates, the industry still looks to be publishing a bumper crop of next-gen AAA titles in 2021 and 2022,” he said.
Some of the most anticipated new games were teased with new trailers at E3 2021. They included Microsoft’s “Halo Infinite,” set for release later this year, and Nintendo’s “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2,” due out in 2022.
Meanwhile, the show’s organizer, the Entertainment Software Association, plans to return to Los Angeles for an in-person event for E3 2022. But ESA doesn’t have the dates confirmed yet.

Related reading:

For years, E3 has been gaming’s biggest event. Is that still true? (Washington Post; June 18, 2021)

E3 2021’s lack of AAA reveals let indie games take the spotlight (TechRadar; June 17, 2021)

The games industry has changed; E3 needs to do the same if it is to remain relevant (Midia Research; June 21, 2021)


Photo: E3 2021 art (Entertainment Software Association)

Vanishing online videos

Few media are as ephemeral as online video. You’ve experienced this if you’ve ever bookmarked a video and it wasn’t there when you checked on it later.
My short-lived video blog, One Stop Video, provides a good case study of the impermanent nature of online videos. I started the blog in March 2009 to spotlight and save some of my favorite funny videos online in one place. I officially quit the blog a year later after many of the videos I had posted had become unavailable.
Based on my recent count, 218 videos that I had embedded on One Stop Video in that year are no longer available. That’s the vast majority of videos I had posted.
I posted a few more items after that and stopped for good in October 2013. This extended period now includes 27 embedded videos that no longer play.
One Stop Video is now an empty husk of a website.
Some of those videos likely are still available somewhere else but were moved during a change in content management systems or licensing deals. I would guess that videos by The Onion and Saturday Night Live in this category.
But others disappeared when their websites folded (Atom.com, Break.com, Current.com, Spike.com, etc.) or their associated television shows were canceled (“The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” etc.).
Other videos were taken down because of perceived copyright infringements.
I find this transient nature of the internet frustrating. But in a world where copies of most videos are only a Google search away, most people probably don’t mind.

Photo: “Broken Television” by Aidan Morgan via Creative Commons.